Girls and Women

by Harriet E. Paine

But we all know that jealousy and envy and hatred are wrong, even if we endeavor to dignify them with finer names, and all of us who have any moral purpose do make our stand against them.

When, therefore, we speak in praise of a woman's emotional nature, we are thinking of a nature in which generosity swallows up justice, and duty is forgotten, because "love is an unerring law." We cannot be too generous, or too loving, or too sensitive to beauty and honor.

But men are as generous and loving as women, so, after all, we do have something a little different from this in our minds when we speak of the emotional nature of women. Do we not mean that a woman is unreasonable?

Love can never be too great, but it is often unwise. All affectionate women who have reached middle age must have received many confidences from girls who have been mistaken in supposing themselves loved by men who have grown tired of them. A girl often suffers intensely in such a case, and it is hard to know how much is due to wounded love, and how much to wounded pride. I suppose most of us have been astonished to see how often when a girl's life seems both to herself and her friends to have been utterly wrecked she is capable of responding to a new lover, and if he proves to be a fine man, how full and fine her own life becomes. This is right, and most natural to the most emotional natures, that is, to those which answer most readily to outside influences. Yet we all have a feeling that sudden and frequent changes of this kind show a shallow character, and girls sometimes make a pathetic struggle to resist new possibilities of happiness, because they cannot bear to admit that the old love can die.

The weakness of character in this case comes from the being ready to love any one who will make us the central figure without regard to any more solid foundation. Such love comes from vanity and is good for nothing. A girl cannot be too careful to guard against such an emotion.

And then, why should a woman cease to love a man simply because she is disappointed to find that he does not love her? Many times the fault is her own. She has believed he loved her because she wished to believe so. But if she has loved him because he was worth being loved, she has a right to cherish that love even when she knows it is hopeless, provided she does not hurt other people. I think it is happily not often that an altogether hopeless love continues long in full vigor, but occasionally it does. If the old lover marries, the woman who cannot conquer her love certainly ought to separate herself as far from him as possible. Any fine theory of being able to be a silent providence in his life is sure to prove fallacious, and to bring suffering to somebody. And it is not best for her to say much to her own friends of her sorrow. She either pains them or tires them. Any love which causes her to do this is unreasonable. I suspect that some women find their love slipping away from them and try to hold it fast by the expedient of talking about it. No love that has to be held in that way is worth keeping. There are loves we should cherish just as there are others which we ought to cast out, but nothing is real which cannot be retained except by making ourselves a burden to other people.

Another unreasonable love is that which a woman feels for a man who has really treated her dishonorably. It is true that we do not love simply for merit. There are sympathies between men and women as between parents and children with which merit has little to do. One great reason that emotional women attract men is because they can make a hero out of such unheroic stuff. And why should we try always to see the exact reality as if that were nearer the truth than the same reality transfigured by ideal light? The more we believe in others, the better and happier we all are. A man full of faults, selfish, and even vicious, may be helped by a woman who trusts him. But when he has forsaken her, it is not often that she can be of much real service to him. She must indeed forgive him, but when she has genuinely forgiven him, the glamour of love will usually have disappeared. If she insists upon shutting herself up from other love for his sake, she should question herself as to the part sentimentality and perversity bear in her character.

Most of the best work done in the world is done in the face of what seem to be insurmountable difficulties. Our faith moves mountains. An impossible duty is done. The fact that women ignore the impossibility is their strongest power. This, I suppose, is what the physician meant when he said that men liked a woman a little better if she was not always governed by reason. "Love believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." We all like to have such love as that lavished upon us. It is a noble love which glorifies the object by keeping in view all the time the ideal which is to be some day realized. It is something very different from the weak love which distorts the object simply because of its personal connection with us. But no doubt women who are weakly emotional in this way do have a great attraction for men, that is, so long as the man himself is an object of their emotions. Such women are pretty sure to have lovers when better and more unselfish women are overlooked. They do not wear very well, and men tire of them, especially when they exercise their emotions in new fields; and as wives (after marriage) and sisters and mothers they prefer the quieter and less impassioned women. But the great and ardent loves which influence a life still belong to the women of ardent feelings.

Ardent feelings well controlled,—that is our ideal; but how few women of strong feelings do control them well, and how few who have perfect self-control have very strong feelings!

Which shall we choose, the strong feelings or the self-control? We have not complete choice in the matter, for we must begin with the temperament we are born with. Others may choose to love or hate us for the temperament we are not responsible for, but what can we do for ourselves?